


The Interview

by Vampmissedith



Category: Take That (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 07:41:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4598466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vampmissedith/pseuds/Vampmissedith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Candace Forrester gets the chance every Take That fan dreams of--interviewing the newly-out Gary Barlow and his partner, Mark Owen. The catch? Her employers have no idea who they are and the only interviews she has ever conducted were with herself in the shower.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Interview

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to my friend Mark, not only for going through this first, but also giving me the courage to post it even though it's been on my laptop for nine months. (Also, thanks to Shan, who also encouraged me to post it!)

Candace Forrester was a new hire; a fresh-faced twenty-one year old, with tightly curled silvery-white hair, in stark contrast to her black skin. Although she had been working for the site for over a month, this was her first genuine article. The site itself was less than a year old, so nobody there had been working long, but she was the one with the least amount of professional experience, and the newest staff member. Before, she had only written two- or three-paragraphed blurbs about the newest film, play, album. Those who had been there since the beginning had the big articles; the ones about hate-crimes and politics, interviews with local queer residents and in-the-closet anonymous police officers. They spoke to high schoolers for polls and wrote about the results and what it meant for the future for queer Americans. They weren’t a high profile site; in fact, until today, the closest they got to a celebrity was an up-and-coming Broadway actress who was pansexual. Up-and-coming was relative when writing for a new site and she had only been in two plays, neither of which had she been lead.

_The New Jersey Queer_ was a group of ten writers and two site coders. Candace had not met any of the other writers in person, although she had gone to high school with one of the coders, Marie. They had belonged to the same Gay-Straight Alliance. When Candace had visited her mother, Marie spotted her in the produce section of the grocery store. Having remembered some of her fictional short stories, Marie told her about the new site and asked her to send in an application.

The application had been more precise than she expected, considering how young and mostly unknown they were. The only experience she had writing articles was the school newspaper for college; all other job experience had had nothing to do with writing whatsoever. Putting Marie down as a reference probably helped, though it was the article she’d written about _Finding Neverland_ that impressed her employer, according to the interview she had over Skype. Saving up money for months and driving to New York for the weekend for Broadway had impressed them, seeing as it had only been for a college paper she wasn’t being paid for. Candace didn’t bother with correction; it wasn’t loyalty to them that had fuelled her to gush over the musical. 

Candace openly hated _Glee;_ nobody could even accuse her of being there for Matthew Morrison.

It was impressive, also, that the composer of the musical had retweeted her article when she linked him to the copy on her blog. It was impressive that he followed her. At least to her employers. When he had mentioned going to New York for a week to write on an upcoming album, she had asked him if he would be comfortable talking with her and with her writing an article. Surprisingly, after some conversation through DM on Twitter, both he and his partner had agreed to it. When she emailed her supervisor about everything, she was given the green light. Not only would it be the first full-blown article she would write for them, but it was going to be the main story. Her editor didn’t consider it a big deal to give her a chance just because she asked, considering how small _The New Jersey Queer was._ To them, the coming out of the composer of _Finding Neverland_ was, while a step up from an up-and-coming Broadway actress, not a particularly large one. They were not worried, then, in handing it to the new girl. Candace had no intention of correcting them.

Gary Barlow and Mark Owen coming out not only as queer, but as boyfriends, was the biggest story her site would report on, and her supervisors didn’t even know it.

Getting to New York wasn’t a problem, though several taxi cabs ignored her and when one finally did pick her up, the driver had hmmphed disbelievingly when she told her the destination. “You mean the hotel? Are you sure?” she had even asked a minute after they started driving. Her nametag declared her as Reynolds, Larissa, and the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth betrayed the age she pretended cheap dollar-store red dye could hide.

Though Candace wore her best dress (retro white-and-red polka dot dress with a large-buckled red belt) she supposed some people had a difficult time believing any young, black woman belonged there. “I’m positive.”

“Oh, a Jersey girl. Of course,” Reynolds, Larissa stated in the same tone her sister’s soon-to-be-ex husband had used to tell her that he wasn’t into the “hipster” thing when she bragged about the tickets she’d managed to buy at the pre-sale for the Take That concert of 2015.

The hotel where Mark and Gary stayed (and where they had decided to conduct the interview) was enormous. She had heard of five-star hotels of course, but hadn’t set foot in one before. Her vacations had always been filled with Super 8s and Motel 6s. In England, she’d even stayed at a hostel (though she had booked a private room). Even just being in the lobby bewildered her; it wasn’t a simple waiting room with a desk; it had a chandelier and a bar; there was a fireplace across from a lavish couch where a family sat and a large flat screen mounted on the wall above it.

Mark and Gary met her at the receptionist’s desk, shaking her hand and introducing themselves despite it being wholly unnecessary. She was struck by how beautiful Gary’s teeth were, as odd as that was, and that her hands were larger, albeit not by much, than Mark’s. He was a small man; shorter than her, though she wasn’t as tall as Gary. He only had an inch on her, however.

They were polite, not that she expected anything else, as they led her to their room. There were five hallways, each had three elevators and someone to check their hotel keys before allowing them behind the silver doors. “She’s with us,” Gary informed when the man eyed her suspiciously. The elevator they needed, apparently, only went to the top ten floors.

Being on the top floor of a hotel wasn’t something she had ever thought would happen to her. Then again, she still hardly believed that she was going to interview two members of Take That about their relationship with each other, and she was hardly old enough to drink. _The New Jersey Queer_ wasn’t popular; the highest amount of hits an article had ever received was just over a thousand. The rest averaged at around six hundred.

The site was about to gain a much larger audience, even if only from the other side of the Atlantic.

Her heart beat louder than her footsteps were against the carpet. When Mark smiled at her and she returned the gesture, her lips were uncomfortably tight due to them being chapped. What if her grin looked similar to Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the Joker? They were used to professional interviewers who had been talking to celebrities for years. The only interviews she had ever conducted were with herself in the shower.

The enormity of the situation had struck her over and over the past week and a half. It wouldn’t take long, after it was posted, for her co-workers and employers to figure out that Gary Barlow was much, much more than a one-time musical composer who had performed some of the play’s songs on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, and that his boyfriend wasn’t someone who simply dated him.

“A gay musical composer. In other news, water is wet,” the coder other than Marie had commented when Candace told Marie over Skype. Greg was Marie’s roommate, though Marie was looking for somewhere else to stay. Greg was openly gay and Marie was too, though her parents still didn’t like the idea of her rooming with a male despite that. A small part of Candace was sure Marie did it specifically because her parents didn’t approve, because it hadn’t taken long for her to get tired of Greg’s “I’m gay so it’s okay for me to do and say inappropriate things” attitude towards feminism and queer rights.

Of course, his comment wasn’t much different from some of the less supportive people on Twitter. Mark, not in the slightest masculine and never shying away from expressing his feminine side, and Gary, being the huge fan of Elton John that he was, had both attracted the “well no shit” reactions. Candace had had her suspicions, not only about their sexualities but about their relationship, for years, but she wouldn’t be so crass as to dismiss their coming out. She could only imagine what the front of the magazines in England looked like and Daily Mail (the plagiarizing conservatives that they were) still talked about it as if they were the only ones who were, despite lifting quotes from years-old interviews taken out of context and passing them off as something said to them in confidence just days ago.

Gary opened the door for both her and Mark. She thanked him with a nod as she walked in. Mark squeezed Gary’s arm as he passed. She etched that moment in her mind; it would promote the domesticity between them in her article and endear them to her readers. Though massively famous (though not in America) it was imperative she focus on their humanity. Even if gay marriage was legal in the United States now, it was still a matter of contention in the media and even if Europe had the image of being more tolerant (they were) towards LGBT issues, everything she had read about their announcement so far had whittled them down to Gay Pop Stars (One of Which Was Once Fat and the Other A Cheating Scumbag: Will Mark Owen Have An Affair Once Gary Bloats Up Again?) Candace couldn’t put into words the amount of loathing she had for the Daily Mail.

Their hotel room was like a small house. She stood in what looked like a lovely sitting room; two couches sat across from each other, a coffee table in between them, and sliding glass doors that led to a balcony that overlooked the beautiful, massive city of New York. Off to the left, there was a kitchenette area, divided from the living room by a counter. She swallowed hard, but it didn’t alleviate her dry throat in the slightest. She was an amateur. Not in the sense that she was suffering from sudden and crushing low self-esteem and fear, but in the sense that she actually was, in a technical and objective sense, an amateur. She had gone over the questions she wanted to ask a million times in her head, but that didn’t account for their answers and how that may affect what she wanted to know, or if they would even feel comfortable discussing it with her.

As of yet, they hadn’t with anyone.

Aside from the official announcement that they made that they were, in fact, seeing each other and that they hoped their fans would continue to support them, there was nothing. Everything else was conjecture and assumption and theory. The truth, their story, rested on her; a nobody who worked part-time at Subway and wrote blurbs for thirty dollars. This article would get her a hundred. She was really, entirely, not at all the person who deserved the job, yet here she was, being asked to sit down across from Gary Barlow and Mark Owen and interview them on their relationship.

She opened her purse and pulled out her iPod. “I’m going to use this to record what we say, is that all right?”

Gary and Mark shared a look, a small smile between them. Gary looked back at her and nodded. He draped his arm along the back of the couch, his fingers curled lightly around Mark’s shoulder. They were probably used to much more expensive equipment. “Yeah, it’s great.”

She started recording and placed it on the coffee table. “All right. I’m Candace Forrester and I’m here today with Gary Barlow and Mark Owen,” she said while she pulled out a small notepad and her pen. She quickly scribbled down Mark’s arm squeeze at the door and Gary putting his arm behind Mark’s shoulders. It was ridiculous, that she was writing it down on a paper like a little girl pretending to be a reporter, rather than a real live interviewer.

“I like your notepad. It’s quite retro,” Mark said with a grin. Suddenly, what she was doing felt less silly. “I like what you’re wearing today, actually, too. Also retro.” He brushed his floppy bangs away from his eyes; it was cut so it was just longer than his ears near the front, but shorter in the back.

Her cheeks warmed and her square-framed glasses slipped down her nose. She pushed them back into place. “Thank you.”

“I got asked once to have a fashion column in a magazine, in the 90's. Couldn’t do it, obviously, because I was so busy with Take That. It would’ve been nice though, really.”

Gary pinched back a smile, then jerked his head towards Mark. “He’s got a bigger wardrobe than I do; that’s sayin’ something.”

Candace narrowed her eyes. “Huh. You’ve been quoted, several times, as saying you’re not really into fashion at all.”

Gary’s face fell and she regretted asking. She should’ve stuck to the questions she had practised in her head. The hand that rested on his thigh started tapping. “Um, well, for a few years I erm. I didn’t feel too good about myself, about who I was. In any sense, not . . . Have you read My Take?”

“No. Sorry. I bought it on Amazon last week, I hoped it would get here before I interviewed you two, but it didn’t even ship until two days ago.”

“Eh, it’s rubbish anyway. But um, well, I don’t know how much you know about . . . My life, but for a few years . . . Well, more’n a few years, I was very depressed. I didn’t get the help I needed. I didn’t even think there was anything wrong, even though there was. I was in denial about the whole thing. Not denial in a sense that I literally didn’t understand that I was depressed, ’cause I spent the majority of my time hating meself and crying, but denial that it was something I didn’t deserve.”

“I’ve read about your depression. It was, um. After the release of your second solo album?”

Gary nodded, though his eyes were no longer focusing on her, but at the coffee table. His fingers tapped away. “Well to be honest, everyone knew it wasn’t going to do very well. The label told me they were going to drop me after I released it, so I knew a few months ahead of time, so it was a bit before that, but. Yeah.”

“Just for the record, if there’s anything that you don’t want me putting in my article, just let me know,” she blurted out of awkwardness. The atmosphere had shifted into something noticeably less cheerful once the topic of his depression came about.

His eyes met hers, and the corner of his mouth shifted upward. “That’s generous of you.”

“I want you--both of you--to be comfortable. But, can I just say, that that’s one of the reasons why you’re such an inspiration, and why I wanted to interview you today. After what you went through in the late 90's, and the early 2000’s, for you to come back so strong, even stronger, than you were before, and eventually move on from that depression, and be honest about it, and show the world that it can, and does, get better for anybody who feels, you know. That way. Plus Mark, you know, you kept trying with your solo work, even started your own label, just that determination. That’s really something I think is important to our readers, the readers of _The New Jersey Queer.”_ She scooted to the edge of the couch, clicking her pen enthusiastically. 

Gary smiled widely, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

“Hold on a second, so you actually know who we are, then?”

“Didn’t I tell you Mark? She’s the one who wrote that review for her college paper.”

“You told me that, I didn’t know she was a fan though.” For as bright and beautiful as Gary’s smile was, Mark’s was even more so. “We don’t actually have a lot of American fans.”

“Yeah, which is such a shame. I actually went to your concert, your III tour, in London. It was amazing. That was before you divorced your wife, Emma, right?” Maybe that segue into the topic at hand was too forced. Neither the tour or the year of it had anything to do with their marriage ending. She’d have to study the recording not only for the article, but to critique herself.

Mark nodded. His hand rested casually against Gary’s knee. They both had their legs crossed, as if mirroring each other. “Yeah, quite awhile before actually. But even when we did divorce, it was several months before we went public about it, really. ‘Cause of my history, y‘know, I knew that people would speculate about why we were divorcing, and I was a bit nervous to be doing it alone so I wanted to wait for Gaz as well, of course there‘s only so long I can keep it quiet. People were already talking about my marriage, not that they had ever stopped. I was trying to come out to my close friends and family during this time, before I let the public know. Adding a divorce on top of that, especially ‘cause Emma and I had had our problems before, it was a bit frightening. So I wanted to test the waters before I threw another story in the works, with people who personally knew me, but once I saw how well it was going, when we did announce our divorce I figured it was a good time as any to let the fans know, and Emma was so supportive and completely understanding of that.”

“Your ex-wife, Emma Ferguson, she’s an actress, yes?”

“She is, yes. She’s wonderful, really, truly. I always was, and I still am, so grateful for her. She’s the mother of my children, and she’s a wonderful mother, a great parent, a very forgiving person and we’re closer, I think, than a lot of divorced couples. We co-parent as much as we can, it’s not . . . really _too_ different than how it was before, I still see my children as much as I ever did, and so does she. We’re actually happier apart than we were together, a lot of that is ‘cause I’m not the easiest person to live with.”

Gary tutted at him, shaking his head. “Don’t say that, Marko. He’s great, honest.” The last part was directed at her.

“Speaking of children, you both have kids from your marriages. Do either of you take on step parent roles . . . ?” She’d trailed off due to Gary shaking his head before she had even finished speaking.

“No, no. I’m not gonna be a step dad, Mark’s not either. I mean, when they stay with us we’re a part of their lives, and they’ve known us both for their whole lives so there’s already a relationship there and obviously there are some changes, but I’m not tryin’ to be Mark’s kids’ step dad, and Mark’s not tryin’ to be my kids’ step dad. Mark and I are not co-parenting in that sense. When we have my kids over, they listen to Mark ‘cause he’s the adult and my boyfriend, but there’s not that sense of him being like a parent. Same when his are over.”

Mark turned to Gary, putting his hand on his shoulder as if to stop him from continuing. “It’s funny actually, she should mention that, because Fox, she’s gonna remember us being together, but she’s not gonna remember me an’ Emma as much, so you know I do wonder if that’ll affect anything.”

“Well I’m sure it will, but she’ll never call me Dad or anything.”

Her sweaty palm slicked along the pen and her breath was still jittery, but she had relaxed since the beginning of the interview. She nodded, a lone, white curl bobbing in front of her eyes. “But how are they handling you two together, romantically?”

“Really well,” Mark answered with a smile and a nod.

Gary twisted his mouth a bit and leaned his head back. “Well . . .” He dragged out the L and moved his head back and forth, as if in a so-so motion. “Dan had a bit of a problem with it at first--not like _that,”_ he added quickly, holding out his hand in a stop gesture. He removed his other hand from behind Mark’s shoulders and started gesticulating. “Thing is, he’s the oldest of all our kids, but I don’t think he had a problem with Mark and I specifically. I think, really, it was that his mother, Dawn, and I were divorced at all, ‘cause y’see, Mark and I didn’t actually get together until awhile after we divorced. He’s always liked Mark, and he never said or did anything to make me think he had a problem with our relationship,” he pointed between himself and Mark, “but I think he was upset that Dawn and I weren’t happy together, ‘cause I think, in a way, you always want your parents to love each other. And we do, I love Dawn, I always will, but it’s just not.” He scrunched up his face. “It’s just not the way someone loves a spouse, or should. I wrestled with that for years, you know, and I didn’t want people to know I wrestled with it. And she’s wonderful, if you’re gonna have a wife, Dawn’s the perfect one to have.”

Candace nodded. “I kinda understand that. Not in a personal way. I have a friend who didn’t realize she was a lesbian until her senior year of high school. She had several boyfriends who she loved, and we all thought she was smitten with them, even she did. She explained it as when she fell in love with a girl for the first time, it was like a click went off in her brain, and she understood somehow that she . . . hadn’t loved her boyfriends in the way she thought she had. Is that sort of what it was like, or no?”

“Yeah,” Gary said quickly, shifting on the couch and clearing his throat. He rubbed the tip of his nose. “That’s what it was like.”

Mark looked around the living room and smiled half-heartedly, the way her father sometimes did when bored with the conversation people around him were having.

She was a terrible interviewer. God, why did she think she could do this?

“So on Twitter, it was said that you might write another autobiography?”

“I dunno if I’d call it an autobiography in the sense My Take was, it’s really going to deal with me and Mark, specifically. I haven’t really started writing it yet, I’ve got a bit of an outline. But I am working on it, thinkin’ about it. The way the press is, y’know, you say something and they attach it to a deeper meaning. You know they want to make a bigger story out of something than it is. What I meant, when I said I wanted to tell our story, was that I was thinking about telling it, not writing it. With Twitter you can only write with so many letters, so it was really taken out of context.”

Mark smiled thinly at her, uncrossed and then crossed his legs, effectively moving him slightly away from Gary. “I’ve read his outline, so it’s coming.”

“So you are writing one, but you didn’t mean it like that when you said it on Twitter?” she asked, eyes narrowing.

He nodded. She quickly scribbled that down.

“So with you two being together now, was it difficult coming to terms with your sexuality?”

“For me? Not really, not in the way I s’pose Gaz must’ve, struggled I mean. Before Take That, I dated girls and boys, when I was in school. I guess for me it was more of a struggle of trying to figure out whether I was bisexual or gay, ‘cause I like women, I do. But I don’t think I can ever really love them in a meaningful way. Not that I don’t love Emma, I do, but yeah. I put off marrying her for so long ‘cause I never wanted a long-term relationship with a woman, except to . . . I really wanted children. I think in a way I must’ve known then, that I wasn’t bisexual, because romantic love was never really on my mind with women, but I find women gorgeous and of course sex is always good. But I think that’s all it was for me, in terms of struggling.”

She turned to Gary. “And you?

He blinked, as if caught off guard. “I struggled with it more, yeah.”

When it became clear that was all he was going to say on the subject, Candace’s smile faltered. She had told him what she’d intended the nature of the interview to be about and he had been more than willing then. Still, the air was thick with awkwardness and her cheeks burned and palms started sweating again. She’d been foolish to kid herself that this wasn’t going to be crap.

“Well, if you don’t mind spoiling your maybe-book a little bit, how did you two get together, romantically? That’s what everyone wants to know.”

They both shifted on the couch across from her before Gary moved forward with a smile. “When Mark announced that he and Emma had divorced--and they’d been apart for quite awhile before he said anything--he came out to the public. He told us that he was gay before then of course, and that was a large part of why, and we’d all . . . I wouldn’t say ‘wondered’ ‘cause I think we all sort of knew he wasn’t straight, but um, Dawn and I had been having our own issues--and out of respect for her I won’t get into that--and him coming out about it, I was . . . I found it interesting. More than I should’ve, to be honest.”

Mark, who was frowning deeply, sat up straighter. “Actually, mind if I stop you there Gaz?” Gary shook his head, and Mark smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes, briefly at Candace. “Mind if I make some tea for us all?”

She was a coffee drinker, but he didn’t need to know that. “That’s absolutely fine. Thank you.”

Mark went to the kitchen, immediately busying himself on the other side of the counter. 

Gary looked at the floor, hand tapping away at his lap.

“So you were saying?” she urged, hastily writing down how it sounded for Mark to bustle about in the kitchen.

He beamed at her and rubbed his nose. “Like I said, there was this interest that shouldn’t’ve been there. And I, um. It was different, for me. To feel that. And uh, things with my wife, with Dawn, weren’t . . . picking up. It wasn’t long after that we decided it was best for us to move on in our lives, away from each other. Again, I’m not gonna get much into it out of respect for her.”

“Of course, I completely understand.”

“It’s a hard thing, divorce. Especially when everything you do is in the headlines, and no one really saw it coming, with me and Dawn. I didn’t really know what to expect, because growing up I was fortunate enough to have no one in my family go through with that. So I talked to Mark about it, we were both recently divorced so going through that together sort of made us a bit closer. We were together one day, just the two of us, out to eat. We spent all day together, talkin’, eatin’, that sort of thing. I drove him home, ‘cause I’d picked him up, and I walked him to the door--we talked for longer than I’d meant to, just standing on his porch, and when he hugged me goodbye, and we just kept hugging--I think there’s a picture of it online somewhere, people were speculating--I sort of . . . became aware that we’d been on a date. He said I smelled nice, and I pulled away and I kissed him. It sent my head soaring.” His grin lit up his face and the room, eyes twinkling as he stared past her. “You know, I’d never felt that way before--about a man, I meant. Just that feeling of a first kiss, you know. ’Cause I’d . . . never kissed a man before, obviously. Mark asked if I wanted to come in and, uh, discuss music with him, and I said yes. So I went in, and we . . . discussed music as soon as we were inside.” He twisted his mouth. “You might not want to put that in there, dunno the age range for your readers.”

Candace laughed. “I think it’ll be all right.”

He laughed too. “Well all right, then. I’ll let you be the judge of that. So really, with us, me an’ Mark, things just, one thing led to another, until we moved in together.”

“They led there pretty quickly,” she joked, though not entirely. “You moved in together two months after you announced your divorce with Dawn.”

“We’d known each other for twenty-five years; once you add attraction to that it . . . goes fast.”

It was what she came for; the story of how they got together. It was what nobody else had heard before, and what no one else would be able to report. And here she had it, on tape, and soon to be submitted online for hundreds to see. Teacups tinked from the kitchen and Mark scuffled about, shutting cupboard doors sharply. The sounds would probably be heard on the recording, just muffled underneath Gary’s story, and perhaps the sound of her clicking her pen as well. It was everything she’d come for.

It wasn’t a let down, per se, but everything felt off, somehow.

“I’ll be honest,” she said, smiling at him perhaps as falsely as he smiled at her, “it’s not exactly what I expected.”

“Well love rarely is.”

She had to concede to his point. “That’s true. But you two never . . . before now? At all?”

Gary sniffed. “Well, obviously there’d been moments where there was attraction. I always sort of knew, I think, that there was possibility for me to . . . perhaps, fall for a man. I’d wondered about my own, er, thoughts, before. Whether I was bisexual or . . . if there was a possibility for that, there. And we all messed around in the nineties, had wanking competitions, that sort of thing--normal young lad stuff, I suspect, where it would cross my mind that I had more of a thrill from it than normal.

“Well and there were times, yeah, where it was Mark, specifically, that made me wonder. Of course there were, he’s beautiful, and he’s a wonderful person, funny and smart and kind. When we first started out, I dunno if you know this, but I pretended to be gay for the first year--which, I think, wasn’t me pretending so much as maybe allowing a certain side to shine. But we were playing mostly at schools durin’ the day and gay clubs at night, and so it was my first introduction into gay culture. We, the band, would go dance at these clubs, mostly end up takin’ home girls yeah, but there was a time . . . Mark and I were dancing together, and there was tension there that I think, maybe, wouldn’t have been there unless I was interested. Dunno if he was, but it felt like it!”

Candace and Gary laughed. Mark did not, but he was busy in the kitchen preparing the tea. 

“And um, I don’t know if you know this either--not sure how much you follow the press in the UK--but in 2014, there was a . . . . We had a really bad flight. Now, I’ve always been uncomfortable with planes, always been scared of ‘em. There was this flight, honestly thought it was crashin’, everyone did. Mark and I clutched to each other, yeah, but . . . It was after. When the plane landed and we were safe, I took off to the loo, sick. Completely panicking, couldn’t even process any thought at all. The idea of getting on a plane again was _absolutely_ terrifying. Mark came in after me, calmed me down--took awhile, but he did. And at one point, we were hugging, and there was . . . . Granted, Dawn and I had been havin’ issues, again not getting into that, but there was this. Moment. This feeling. I knew what it was, but I brushed it off as adrenaline, though I think a part of me knew then that . . . . There was something, not just room for my sexuality in general, but room for him. Course it was much later that I did anything about it, but it still matters a lot to me.

“So yeah, there were moments, I’ve always been fascinated by the gay culture, fascinated with Elton, of course it had crossed my mind idly, but not . . . . If you’re asking if Mark and I were ever together before we divorced our wives, no.” He rubbed his nose.

“Was making the transition between friends to boyfriends challenging or was it easy?”

“It’s not been hard at all. There are some differences, of course, but they always say to marry your best friend.” He laughed.

“And are you? Getting married, I mean?”

Gary stopped his chuckles. “Oh, erm. No, no. Bit too soon for that. What I meant was date. Date your best friend.”

“Right, of course. Well, with you two being so close for so many years, it makes sense that it wouldn’t be difficult. Mark even went to you in 2003 when you weren’t as, um. Publicly loved. So it makes sense that it wouldn’t be hard to go from friend to lover.”

“Wow. You really are a fan,” Gary chuckled. “Not too many of those in the US.”

She smiled at him. “When I was fifteen I had a penpal in England. He and I sort of had a relationship, well. As much as you can have a long distance relationship at fifteen. We really only talked for about four months, and really the only thing that we had in common was we were both bisexual, but he introduced me to Take That. Even after we ended it, I just really loved your stuff. I looked into your solo music and Mark’s. I was already aware of Robbie’s solo work before, but I didn’t know he used to be in a band or anything. I actually bought all of it, um. I have the boxsets and everything, I got Since I Saw You Last autographed, and III as well. It’s . . . well, I’m actually really stunned that I get to interview you today, really. This is like a dream come true, it’s kind of . . . intense.”

“Aw, that’s sweet of you. Thank you,” Mark chimed from the kitchen.

This time her blush had nothing to do with her feeling inadequate. 

“Anyway, so how has it impacted your relationship with the rest of the band? Friends, family?” She couldn’t allow herself to become too off-task.

Gary shook his head. “Not really affected anything, to be honest. There was a bit of confusion at first, but nothin’ else. I think Howard and Rob saw it coming so they weren’t as surprised as everyone else. We’ve had a lot of support from all around.”

Candace smiled. “I was lucky, too. My family’s pretty liberal, so I never really hid the fact I was queer. When I did come out as bisexual, it was sort of . . . anti-climactic, and just me deciding to identify and wanting them to know the label I preferred.”

“That’s me. I’m bisexual.” Gary smiled at her, hands clasped together in front of him.

Candace smiled, all nervousness twisting her stomach and shaking her hands finally gone. “See, this is exactly what I wanted from this interview.”

“What’s that?”

“Just this . . . _honesty.”_ Gary tilted his head at her, brows furrowed. “You know, with all the progress the United States, and other places, have been making for queer rights, but it’s still . . . We’re not where we want to be, not yet. Of course, civil rights is always a long, slow process, but I just, I want--I need--young queer people to see this. This is what _The New Jersey Queer_ is all about.

“Take you, for instance--both of you,” she added, scooting to the edge of her seat excitedly, “you’ve shown my readers,” she would change her ‘my’ to ‘our’ in the article, “that there’s no specific pace someone needs to have. Some people take their whole lives to come to terms with themselves, or figure themselves out. We need them to see that it does get better, that there is every reason to be true to yourself. If you two, with children and marriages in your past, can come out, that it’s gotta be okay for them. You have every reason to lie, every reason to hide; you have something that most of our readers don’t have, and that’s hundreds of eyes on you at all times. You have this insane burden of fame, of everyone watching you all the time, and we know that it’s still hard for queer people to be in the media at all without being pigeon-holed, and you two came out and still ended up together. I want people to have hope, without fear. Queer youths are struggling with their identities, with what they are and who they are and whether it’s all right to be confused or know immediately, and that coming out isn’t going to ruin them, or limit their options. That’s exactly what I wanted; to show them there is no reason to hide, to lie, to be ashamed.”

Gary’s shoulders sagged. He opened his mouth, brows knit together, and the tea kettle screeched.

Mark came out of the kitchen, putting a teacup on a saucer in front of Candace, then taking his spot beside Gary after putting theirs down. There was a dish with sugar packets and creamer on the centre of the coffee table. She copied Mark in what to do with the tea. When Gary still stared ahead of himself with hands clasped, Mark did Gary’s for him.

“I wasn’t . . . entirely honest earlier,” Gary stated as soon as they finished stirring their tea.

Mark stared at him, eyes widening. He touched his knee.

Candace lowered her cup of tea. She had hardly taken a sip, but kept it next to her lips longer to make it appear as if she’d drank more than she had. She just didn’t like how it tasted. “About what?”

“Anything.”

“Gaz . . . .”

“No, it’s all right, Mark.” Gary swallowed audibly. “Thing is, we’ve been together since the nineties.”

Candace froze. Not that she’d been moving much before, but everything about her stopped. She wouldn’t have been able to speak if she wanted to. Oh, she had wondered if there had been an indiscretion in the past, but this? This was going to change everything. Interviewing celebrities she admired as an amateur was one thing, and she had gone into it knowing she was putting far too much on her plate, but this was massive.

How long had the room been quiet? Not long, clearly. Two seconds? Three? It felt longer. Mark’s hand was on Gary’s knee, and Gary’s large hand covered his small one. He clutched at it.

“Oh,” Candace finally managed. She cleared her throat. “And, uh, how . . . was that, then?” That was idiotic. “How did that come about?” she asked, in as steady a voice as she could.

After a long second of silence, Mark met her eyes with a soft smile. “I asked him on a date. This was when Take That was still nothin’ big, really. Like Gaz said, we were performing in schools and gay clubs. I’d dated boys and girls in school, my parents knew I liked both, I’d been in the clubs before, even. Gary was cute, and funny, and talented, and he seemed interested in me. For the first while we mostly flirted. We went dancing, right up against each other, staring at each other the whole time, we spent hours late into the night talking to each other. I liked him, didn’t think we were ever gonna become as big as we did, so I asked him out. What else was there to do when you’re looking at someone as gorgeous as Gary.”

Gary pushed his shoulder against Mark’s, smiling wide. “I didn’t want him to know I was new at this. Earlier, when I said I was pretending to be gay, well. I wasn’t. It was the first time in my life that I’d been surrounded by men, gay men, and everyone was okay, was happy. It was, what I thought, consequence-free. Like Mark, I never thought Take That would get as big as it did. At most I thought it was just a stepping stone into a real career, I’d been on TV before, done a music video even, wasn’t expecting much more than that. Thought it was fun. And so I just . . . let myself be the way I was, the way I wanted to be. I wasn’t hiding. And Mark, he says I was gorgeous but I wasn’t--honestly, my hair was terrible, I was pale--but he was . . . beautiful.”

Mark shook his head, though he was smiling thinly.

“I flirted with him and he flirted back, and we danced together, always touched each other, and when he asked me out I don’t even think I let him finish the question before I said I would. I was pathetic, honestly.”

“No more pathetic than me, Gaz.” Mark nudged him with his elbow, and their fingers interlaced over Gary’s knee.

“And the date went wonderfully, just _wonderfully,_ and I walked him to his hotel room. I had never kissed a man before, but I knew I wanted to kiss him, but I absolutely didn’t want him to know I’d never kissed a man before. So I thought I could act suave, come in like I was _smooth.”_

“You actually were pretty smooth, Gary. After we’d talked a bit, you know just avoiding saying goodbye in general, he cupped my face like we were in a movie and said I had a lovely voice.”

“Now c’mon Mark, don’t go about embarrassin’ me.” Their laughs and smiles were contagious; Candace couldn’t help but grin along with them. “But I did do that, yeah. Like I said, I thought I was James Bond.”

“Then he kissed me.”

“Then I kissed him, yeah. And it, I’d never felt that way in my life, it was like a shot of adrenaline to the heart. My head spun off into space, felt like I couldn’t breathe. I felt the fireworks people talk about, I’d never felt that before, ‘cause I’d never kissed a man before. I’d been with women of course, but just--it’s different. And I’d never, not with a girl, never felt that way, so I knew it, I knew it then, and that was so much to take in, ‘cause I knew then, I knew. I knew I was gay.”

“That’s a lot to take in,” Candace urged, scribbling down their closeness and hand holding.

“It was but, everything felt so right. At the time, I didn’t think about how . . . how one day I might want to hide from that. All I knew then was, I just want to keep kissing him, and keep feeling that way.”

Mark smiled, turning to stare at Gary with his eyes bright. He looked back to Candace. “I didn’t have a clue he’d never been with a man before. He had no hesitation, he was really into being in the gay scene--same as I was. We were inseparable for awhile, we still saw other people occasionally, we weren’t exclusive, but it was us, most of the time. Everyone knew, Nigel didn’t approve of it ‘cause he didn’t want to turn away fans. His theory, which was accurate really, was that boy bands did well ‘cause the fans thought they had a chance with the members. If we were ambiguous, gay men could think it too, but the truth is, we had to be seen as mostly straight.”

Gary cleared his throat. “I dunno how much you know about the eighties, ‘cause I can tell you weren’t born ‘til the mid- to late-nineties, but when AIDS came about, it was said it was the gay disease. You could only get it if you were gay, and you could get it from touchin’ someone who had it. It was this epidemic, everyone was scared of getting it. Now, it came about at the worst time--in the seventies, there was a surge of gay equality. We had celebrities, male celebrities, like Elton John and David Bowie and others comin’ out as bi, but when AIDS came about, many of ‘em started rejecting that. David Bowie even said that he was straight, because that’s how serious the media and society was takin’ the AIDS thing. Being gay was basically sayin’ you had AIDS, and to know a gay person made you susceptible to getting AIDS. Nigel knew that we’d get nowhere if we were gay, but the gay community could get us soaring. So we couldn’t be out, and we couldn’t be dating anyone because people needed to think that we were available. It’s how boy bands work, ‘specially in the nineties. It’s why none of the Backstreet Boys had girlfriends--even though they did. They just had to hide it--I had girlfriends, I cheated on them of course, and Rob had a girlfriend he had pretending to be his cousin so she could follow us around.”

Mark nodded. “Nigel said to us, you know, have as much sex as you want, but no relationships. And with me and Gaz being the way we were, being inseparable and going on dates around town, he sort of sold our closeness as us meeting at this studio in Manchester, to sort of explain away the way we were. He thought us having this story of being friends before the band would sell better.”

“Now, this is Nigel Martin-Smith, your former manager? The one who recently came out saying you two had been having an affair for over twenty years and said some unkind things about your wives?” Candace didn’t know much about Nigel, but from what she did know, he was not an pleasant person.

“There was truth to what he said about me an’ Mark, but everything else he said, about Dawn, about Emma, and how we were with our kids was complete shit. He has a habit of comin’ out with half-truths and then makin’ up hurtful, shit theories and spinning them as fact.”

Mark nodded. “Nigel, the first night we all sat down with him, had us sit around and acted like he was opening up to us about himself, like some sort of trust game. He had us tell him all our secrets, and we all had fun doing it. Of course, later on, he used that to blackmail and bribe us, for years. He threatened to come out about us before, a few years ago, Gary did what he could to prevent him from doing that. We knew that as soon as we came out he would go to the press, say this sort of horrible thing. We just didn’t expect him to say more than that. To lie.”

“The only thing-- _only_ thing--Nigel said that had any ounce of truth in it, was that Mark and I have been together for as long as we have. Everything else is utter shit.”

Candace nodded. “Duly noted.”

“The nineties were rough,” Gary said, lips a tight line. “The more we became famous, the more I felt that weight of what being gay really meant. I know it’s not as much as it is now, but back then, with the cameras everywhere, fans followings us to our homes, felt like I couldn’t have a single private moment. More than anything, I wanted to be a pop star. I wanted success in the music industry, and that just didn’t happen in the nineties if you weren’t straight. Elton made it, because he’d been famous before coming out as bi, and when he did come out as bisexual in the seventies it was the trendy thing--not that being bisexual is a trend, it was just more culturally accepted. Of course, then the eighties happened, but he’d already had that success so when he came out as gay in the eighties, he was the exception. For me? It wouldn’t have been the case. And I told myself that what I had with Mark was just fun, just experimenting. That it didn’t mean anything serious. I took a lot of women to my room with me. I exaggerated how many in My Take, but there were a lot. Mark did too, not as often as I did, but more often than not we shared a room together, but I still refused to call it a relationship, even in my head.”

“For me it wasn’t really a struggle. Like I said, my biggest struggle was figuring out whether I was gay or bisexual. I knew what I had with Gary, at least on my end, was real. We did see other people but I still, very much, felt a lot for him. I was under the impression that once Take That ended--and we were told from the beginning that Take That could only last a few years, ‘cause that’s how boy bands are--that he and I would be out.”

“I’m not proud of that.” Gary swallowed audibly. “I let him think that. I even led him to believe I would come out with him, once the band ended, but I never had plans to do that. Once Robbie left, we all knew it was a matter of time before we’d split up. But I had my eyes set a lot higher than Take That, I wanted a solo career, and I couldn’t be a success if I was gay. There was absolutely no way that it would work. And so I . . . I knew I had to, if--if I wanted to have success, I couldn’t come out with Mark. And after years of being ambiguous, and it’s a fact that men in stable relationships are seen as more stable themselves, and mature, and bein’ in a boy band doesn’t really give you that image.”

Gary sucked in a breath and closed his eyes.

“Dawn was a calculated decision. I’d met her before, she was shy and pretty, the kind of girl you marry. So from the beginning, that was my plan. I didn’t tell Mark what I was doing, and he knew I slept with women so there was nothing for him to think of it. I even started proposing early. Dawn’s a great woman. If I were straight, she’d be a great wife. She didn’t deserve that. And Mark, he didn’t deserve that, either.”

“It’s all right, Gaz.”

Gary squeezed the hand he already held.

“You already know this next bit, but there’s something . . . . My first album did well. But with Rob, he looked at Mark like a brother. And I . . . I left Mark, I . . . asked him to be okay with lying, with hiding, for more years, with me marrying someone. I broke his heart. Rob and I have made our peace, we’ve moved on from this, but I don’t think he could get over me breaking Mark’s heart. I think it’s part of why he was the way he was.”

“It was hard for me. I had fallen in love with him, with Gaz. I was angry. I couldn’t even stay friends with the rest, with the band. They all went on as if nothing changed, but I couldn’t pretend. It hurt too much. So I forced myself to move on, but I never felt it. I tried but I never felt the way I did about Gary. I’d never had my heart broken before.

“My album did all right, but not as good as I wanted. What the label wanted. I took too long writing the new album, I just wasn’t confident enough. I dropped off people’s radar, which was fine, it wasn’t anything like what Gary went through. But when I went through Celebrity Big Brother, I was hopin’ to get notice for my second album. And when I won--which I wasn’t expecting, and I didn’t really deserve it either--I saw my chance. But I . . . I still wasn’t confident enough, I still needed some help, and I trusted that Gary would know how to do that.”

“Oh, you didn’t need any help, Mark. You’re a fantastic writer.”

“I’m not like you, Gaz.”

“Oh, c’mon, but you are. Your music is fantastic. I love it, it’s beautiful. I always knew you were good, always.” He spoke tenderly; softly, but not quietly.

Mark’s cheeks went pink. “So we worked together. He was married and had kids and I knew that, but . . . I packed me best clothes. I made sure to look my best. I packed, er, ? _things,_ in case something happened between us, even though I was seeing someone too. Because I, well, I didn’t admit to it, not even in my head, but I _wanted_ something to happen.”

Candace raised her eyebrows. “And did it? Did something happen?”

“Christ, we didn’t even last three days,” Gary muttered while he shook his head, chuckling.

“Working with Gary was something new for me. The first time around, Gary worked alone. But working with him was something different and I could tell he loved it, loved working with music, but whenever I asked him he said he wasn’t, that he was happy being out of music. I knew he was lying, and I kept trying to get him to open up about it. He just wouldn’t admit to not being happy, but being so close with him, and we have that history. Yeah, it didn’t take long.”

“I actually feel bad about that, though. I’m not proud that I did what I did. Like I said, Dawn is a wonderful woman. It was just. I lied to her, not just about . . . being gay, but about everything. She’d told me that she wanted to settle down, that once she found the right man she didn’t want to focus so much on her career. Now, I’d proposed to her several times, far too soon, and she kept saying no. It wasn’t until we both knew my second album would fail that she said yes and it’s because she knew I could be there, like a proper family man. And I let her believe that I was okay with that, okay with failing as a musician, that she was right and it was time to settle down. I let her believe--no, that’s not even the right term. I lied to her. I made her believe I was happy, that I wanted to be a family man, that I was done with music. And I wanted to be, for her, because she is such an amazing woman, y’know.

“But with Mark, I couldn’t lie. Mark knew me when I was in the band, and when I was happy. He heard me tell him over and over how that’s all I ever wanted, from the age of eleven on, that music was the one thing I was passionate about. I was more honest with him than I ever was with Dawn, ‘cause from the beginning I was lying to her. About everything.”

“In your defence Gaz, I was comin’ at you hard. I really wanted you.”

Gary laughed, both hands coming up and covering his face to muffle his high-pitched squeals. Candace couldn’t help but chuckle, though she tried to cover it with a cough.

“It’s true! I was flirting with him, lowering my voice, touchin’ his arm, biting my lip--the whole works. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t doin’ what I was doing, but that was all lies. I think seeing him, and all the memories of what we had, just sorta made it hard not to, really. That’s not an excuse, I shouldn’t have done it.”

Gary pulled his hands down, face still red. “I was at my biggest at that point--I meant, with my weight. Musically, everyone hated me. That’s not an exaggeration. Some people even refused to credit workin’ with me. I was not liked, at all, and I felt like a failure, and I couldn’t tell Dawn about that, ‘cause I think I’d managed to convince myself at that point I wasn’t lying and if I mentioned it out loud to her then I couldn’t pretend anymore--which is pathetic ‘cause I spent most days crying about it while I tried to play my piano, I mean I was really a wreck. And there Mark is, beautiful as ever, and I was . . . not, to put it lightly--”

“Gaz,” Mark said, giving him a look and swatting his knee.

“--but Mark didn’t seem to care, just wanted to work with me, never looked at me any different than he used to. He wanted to talk to me, wasn’t rude to me at all--and he had every right to be, I threw something at him the last time we’d talked, we’d had a huge argument--and just, really collaborating with him, really working on music again, with him, it was like a dream and I didn’t want to admit to that, ‘cause then I’d have to admit I wasn’t happy without it.”

“It was the second day we were working and we started reminiscing about the nineties. We were still workin’, of course, Gary was very professional about that, we worked really hard on that album, but we started talking. At first we were just talking about everything else, makin’ sure not to mention anything about us, specifically. I could tell he was skirting the issue ‘cause so was I, really, but eventually I just went with it and brought up, er, something. I can’t remember what it was now, but it was something we did.”

“It was when we got into that food fight, with Rob, ‘cause he walked in on us snogging and threw his pie at us.”

Mark nodded vigorously. “Right, it was that. And after I mentioned that, we just kept talking about it. All these memories we made, all these times we had together, we were talking about sex and all these dates we’d gone on, everything, and I kept touching his thigh, his knee, standing so I was right against him--”

“And I had no idea that was what he was doing. I had absolutely no clue that he was flirting with me. I dunno if it was because I thought I was too fat to be flirted with, or I was being an idiot, or both, which is honestly most likely, but I didn’t have a clue.”

“It was so embarrassing. At the end of the day, he walked me to my room, and I asked him if he wanted to come in and discuss music, but he said no, that it was late and he should probably go to bed. Oh, I was so embarrassed. I spent the whole night hating myself for coming onto a married man in his own home, with his wife in the same house, and of course now he wouldn’t want to finish working with me ‘cause why would he after that?”

“Meanwhile I thought he’d meant actually talking about music. I was _that_ stupid.”

Mark chuckled and shook his head. “So the next morning at breakfast, Dawn wasn’t in the kitchen at the time, I apologised, I kept saying that I shouldn’t have asked. Gaz is sittin’ there, telling me it’s all right, I’ve nothing to apologise for, but I tell him that I should’ve never expected him to do that, ‘cause he’s married with children, and he stops me and goes; ‘Wait, what?’ It was then I figured that he’d thought I meant actually discussing music, not . . . comin’ up for some coffee. But then Dawn came in so we couldn’t talk about it.”

“I was on Mark soon as the studio doors closed behind us. Thank Christ it’s soundproofed.” 

Candace blushed, mind whirring with images she hastily shoved aside.

Gary furrowed his brows. “I think what it was, I hadn’t felt wanted--hadn’t been wanted--like that in years, in any aspect. Yet here he was, wanting to write with me personally, and once I realised he wanted me to come in his room for other reasons than music, it struck me that he had been flirting with me the entire time. Not even subtly. Dawn loved me, yeah, but when you’ve been married for three years, and you have two kids, and I wasn’t really . . . initiating anything in that respect, I didn’t feel good enough with myself to do that, you don’t get that feeling of want, that lust. Not often, anyway, and he _wanted_ me. After that, we uh. I’m not proud of it, but we had an intense time working together. And we did work, mind you.”

Mark crossed his legs, one knee over the other. “We kept in touch after that, a bit. I was a bit naïve, thought this meant we were gonna come out together right away, I even left my girlfriend, Chloe, though to be fair that wasn’t working out at all. I don’t know why I thought this meant Gaz was gonna up and leave Dawn, because he never gave me a reason to think he was ready for that. Really, I’m not sure I was, even, and it probably wouldn’t have been for the best ‘cause neither of us were in the right place, emotionally. My albums were tanking, my first two did so horribly I had to start my own label, and I was not happy about it. I wasn’t much better off than Gaz, really. Locking myself in bathrooms and crying for hours straight. It was terrible.

“Of course that’s around when I met Emma, and er, and Neva. See and Gary and I, we just slowly stopped contacting each other.” He pushed his bangs out of his face while Gary watched him, smiling softly. “I still cared about him, still wanted good things for him, and when we did the documentary, you know, and we decided to do the reunion tour, the Ultimate Tour, we’d . . . not been together, in that sense, for awhile. And nobody thought the reunion would lead to the band reforming, legitimately reforming, and we were all under the impression it would just be one tour and then we’d go off in our separate ways, no more music or anything. I’d given up thinkin’ Gary and I might get together for real. Y’know, and with Emma and Elwood, I had other things that I could go home to, and I’d always, always wanted children. So when we saw each other, I think we both decided not to do anything. I mean the boys all knew we were together in the nineties, but we were young then, and now we were both in a relationship with children. I guess a small part of me was worried what they’d think. And since it wasn’t going to last, the tour, the band getting together, why bother?”

“I couldn’t let myself hope that we’d reform. I just couldn’t. I was being given a chance to do one last tour, a proper goodbye, but that’s all it was supposed to be--one last time. And I wanted more than anything to be involved in music, but I had been out of music so long and convinced myself I was fine without it, even better off without it, and completely happy as a family man--which there’s nothing wrong with that, honestly--it’s just not me. But I had lied to Dawn, and to myself, for so long, being given this was hard, so I had to tell myself it was just once, nothing else, and not even hope for more, because I knew I’d just go back home, go back to not being involved in music. And I couldn’t let myself admit I just wasn’t happy doing that, and I was being given a chance to have a good, proper goodbye, and I used it. That’s when I wrote My Take.”

“I’ll be reading it in a few days,” Candace promised.

“Just keep that in mind when you do, what I said.”

“Do you not think it’s good?”

Gary shrugged. “It’s not honest.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, then. So you were saying?”

Mark nodded. “Well, so we were both trying not to do anything together, like that, because it would just make it more difficult to say goodbye, plus neither of us thought it was going to go anywhere. But it was really successful, and we were excited, and . . . We slipped up. Gaz walked me to my room, and Emma wasn’t there and I think Dawn had to go somewhere?”

“She’d gone home for the kids, and I said I wanted to stay behind to go over some stuff for the tour.”

“Right, so Gaz walked me to my room, my hotel room. And we talked the way there, but when we got there we didn’t stop talking, we kept idling, y’know, like we didn’t want to say goodbye. And it’s hard not to . . . go there when you’ve already gone there, and you have a history together, and . . . I loved him, I’ve always loved him. So we hug, to say goodbye, but he smells nice. Really nice. And I tell him that, and then we’re kissing, and . . . Well, we slipped up.

“But after, it was ‘oh, it’s just this once, we’ll not do it again’ and then, of course, few weeks later, we do it again. And we just keep slippin’, me and Gaz, and then the band reforms, and it just keeps happening. We did so well, and we were successful, and I love being involved in music, really involved, and I didn’t want it to end so I begged everyone to get the band together, and of course it didn’t take Howard and Jay long to figure out that we were having little slip ups, and they kept becoming more frequent. Eventually we just stopped pretending that we weren’t going to slip up. I think that was either during Beautiful World tour or just after, I can’t really remember because, like I said, we just kept ending up with each other. And I already was putting off getting married to Emma because the truth was, I had never wanted to marry a woman, not really. I just didn’t want that long sort of commitment, never had, because I think I always knew that about myself, but then with Gary on top of that, if I got married, it would be like admitting Gary and I would never truly be together. Of course I did, eventually, get married, after we had Willow and Gary had Daisy. I think it just felt like it’ll never be anything more than an affair.”

“Did you ever ask Gary to come out with you?”

“Well, he’d promised once, hadn’t he? And he didn’t. And I’d been so sure of it after 2003, and again, it didn’t happen. So I just thought, why bother? If he wants to do this, he’ll do it, but I’m not going to ask.” Mark shifted on the couch. “This is something he and I would eventually argue about a lot. Really, it was the one thing we fought about a lot, so this isn’t something I want to talk about much, if you don’t mind.”

Candace nodded. “That’s all right, you don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”

This time, Gary was the one who put his hand on Mark’s thigh, squeezing it comfortingly, before he scooted a bit forward on the couch. “For me, I just had a hard time opening up about how I felt. It’s something I’ve always struggled with, that. I think, what it is, I’ve always poured myself into my song writing so much that I have a hard time translating that into my daily life. It was harder then, because there was a lot of stuff I hadn’t come to terms with myself, let alone enough to talk about aloud. I didn’t want to admit how depressed I’d been, for one thing, and I didn’t want to admit that what I had with Mark was too much to deny, or whatever. You know I had at one point convinced myself that whatever we had was just fun, that it wasn’t anything real, even though I couldn’t stop thinking about him and I loved him, so much, but I just couldn’t allow myself to accept that, not after everything Dawn had done for me. I really felt like a terrible person for this, for what I was doing to Dawn, and I didn’t want to further that by talking about it, so it was my fault, honestly, not Mark’s, that we didn’t discuss this. I had before, with him, and yeah, it’d gone nowhere. But I should’ve been thinking about what I was doing to Mark, too. And the right thing wouldn’t have been to keep lying about myself hoping one day it would be true, with how I was with Dawn, and instead be honest and leave her. But you don’t think about these things when you’re in the thick of it.”

“So when did you decide to do this, come out together?”

“I don’t think it was anything we ever really discussed and decided on together,” Gary answered, draping his arm behind Mark. His fingers curled around his shoulder. Mark pressed against Gary slightly. “There were times we would get close, but then something would happen that would set us back. Emma getting pregnant with Fox, and um. What happened with Poppy. This sort of gets into some areas I don’t want to talk about, if you don’t mind.”

“Absolutely, I completely understand.”

Mark cleared his throat. “For me, I think, I had always hoped that it would be Gary who made the first step. Who decided he and Dawn couldn’t work first. Because I had been waiting for him for years, since the nineties, and I didn’t want to go out on my own if there wasn’t a guarantee that he’d be there too, but after awhile I just assumed it wasn’t going to happen. I was waiting for him, rather than making decisions on my own time, and with a new baby, and just assuming Gary would never take that step, for awhile I decided that it was best if I put my energy into being a good husband for Emma, because I never had been, and that’s not fair to her. But it’s honest.

“Eventually though I realized that no matter what I told myself, and no matter how many times I tried to take a step back from this, I’d always be waiting. I’d always want Gaz, want to be with him. That I could never give Emma the love she wanted, and we weren’t happy. Honestly, Emma and I weren’t. So I made the decision to leave Emma on my own time, though much later than I should’ve. It had nothing to do with Gary really, just more of the fact I had this moment of clarity where I realized that even if Gary never left Dawn, I couldn’t keep doing this to Emma, who is a wonderful, strong woman and who deserves so much more than what I could give her. So I left her, for myself, and for her benefit, and for my kids, because they deserve to have happy parents, and I want them to grow up seeing that, not seeing us be cold with each other or fighting all the time.”

“I’d had a moment of clarity as well,” Gary chimed in. “With the plane scare, in 2014. Mark did comfort me in the loo, when I was panicking and refused to get on a plane ever again, and it sort of occurred to me that he was the one, for me. He was who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I’d had moments of knowing that before, but that hit me harder than ever before. Still took longer than it should’ve after all that, still had moments where I took steps back from what I knew had to happen, but I think if I’m honest with myself that was when it was no longer a maybe and if situation, but a definite and when situation. So there was some truth to what I said about that, earlier.”

“I’d had that moment too, Gaz.”

They met each other’s eyes and smiled; though it was brief and innocent, Candace looked down at her notepad to distract herself. It felt somehow like intruding on a private moment.

“So I sat Emma down and we discussed separating,” Mark continued. “I told her that I was gay, and she asked if there was someone else. I said there was, and she seemed to know who without me telling her. We decided it was best to wait until everything went through, legally, and the people closest to us had had time to adjust, our kids and family mostly, before we came out about that. We moved out of our house. We actually get along far better now than we ever did married, and it’s better for the kids, and for her, and me.”

“See me, I know it might not be the image I have, but I need a little push about things sometimes. I didn’t used to, but after my seven year rest from music, it’s hard for me to take chances, I think. But once Mark made his move, I knew I had to make mine. See, the thing is, Dawn and I had already discussed separating before. Now we’d never got as far as being legally separated, it was only for a little while, but with Mark not leaving Emma I was too scared to go through it, and asked to call it off. But once we got that out there, once we’d already tried breaking apart, it didn’t really go away. Things, like I said, hadn’t been okay at home for long while, so when Mark and Emma separated, I finally told Dawn that I think this time, we needed to go through with it. And I told her why, I told her everything. She deserved that, I’d lied too much enough as it is.”

“And that’s how you got where you are today?” Candace asked.

Mark nodded. “Well, we waited awhile before moving in together, but we didn’t hide that we were together. My family was pretty supportive of it, like I said, I’d dated men and women before Take That, so it wasn’t too much of a shock. They all knew I’d had a soft spot for Gaz, so even if they didn’t already know I don’t think any of them were surprised.”

“I think for me, Ian had that hardest time with accepting it, out of anyone. My mum, now she’s not homophobic at all, but there was that sort of . . . distance, between her liking gay men and having a gay son. But, on the whole, I think everyone’s come to terms with it, even if they aren’t completely happy with how it came about. When you’re married, you do sort of become family with your in-laws, and Dawn was their family, as well as mine. So it was like losing someone for them, I think. And there’s still some of that there, but I think they’ve come around.”

“Well that’s good, that’s really good news. So this is where we are now, then?” The interview was coming to a close; there wasn’t much left for them to tell, but a part of her didn’t want it to end. Another part of her felt she hadn’t asked enough questions or been professional and wanted to try again, but she couldn’t make time stop or rewind just from wanting it.

Mark caught Gary’s eyes and raised his eyebrow. “Well there is one . . . more thing,” he said carefully, not looking away from Gary as he spoke. Gary smiled and nodded, the smile stretching wider when Mark faced Candace. “Gaz and I are getting married.”

“Oh my _God.”_ Her hands flew to her mouth, pen dropping to her lap. They both chuckled (Gary’s laugh was closer to a giggle, if anything) and she fumbled with the pen in her lap. “I meant, that’s wonderful news, I’m so happy for you two, congratulations.” Her voice was still far too high-pitched and rushed to be the proper, professional way for her to react.

Both of their faces were bright red. Their knees were pressed together and Mark’s shoulder was snuggled against Gary’s chest comfortably. “I proposed to him,” Gary said, unable to stop grinning even while talking. “It’s not really a fancy story or anythin’, we were just talkin’ in bed one night and we talked about it, and I asked and he said yes. We’d jokingly talked about it before, but I meant it this time, and I held his face when I asked so he’d know I was bein’ serious. And he said yes, and you’re always a bit surprised when someone says yes, I think, or just so ecstatic it feels like surprise.”

“We were planning on announcing in a month but, well, why not now?”

She grinned even harder, which she would have thought impossible. “I am so happy for you two, really. And thank you, thank you so much, for sharing that with me. And everything else, too! This really, really means a lot.”

Mark nodded. “Of course, you’re very welcome.”

“I really enjoyed this. It was a very good interview.”

She blushed again. “Thank you, so much. Really.”

She turned her recorder off and slipped it into her purse, along with her pen and notepad. “Again, thank you,” she said, though there was no reason as she had said it more than enough times and the interview was over. “That must’ve been hard for you, to be honest like that. It means a lot that you decided to be. I really wanted to do this, as a fan, and I didn’t let my supervisor know how big of a deal this was, because if she knew, she wouldn’t have let me do this. I’ve literally never done an interview before. So thank you for giving me this chance, thank you.”

She had closed her purse and stood up before Gary stopped her. “That’s why I agreed to this.”

“What’s that?”

“I knew you’d never done an article before; I searched your name and the site on Google. You’d be easier to lie to.” He grimaced at her. “I’m really sorry for that.”

The sting that would’ve been there was dulled by the fact he had decided to be honest in the end. She nodded at him. “It’s all right, I lied too.” She gestured at the cup that remained almost untouched on the coffee table. “I don’t like tea.”


End file.
